


Just Another Number

by axilet



Series: This Family Is Alright [1]
Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Canon - Video Game, Christmas fic, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Human Experimentation, Kid Sephiroth, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-28
Updated: 2012-11-28
Packaged: 2017-11-19 17:58:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/576082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/axilet/pseuds/axilet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Gast has good intentions, Hojo has severe work-life balance issues (among others), and Sephiroth has, briefly, a new hat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Another Number

The child looked up at him, solemn eyes large and unwavering in his small wan face. He sat on a chair, back perfectly straight, never once fidgeting. Gast stood in the doorway of the office and stared back at this strange, inexplicable child he had helped raise. (In the deepest darknesses of the night when he was alone he sometimes thought:  _my son._ ) After a few uncomfortable seconds he had to look away but refused to catalogue the knotting sensation in the region of his intestines as unease or any variant of it.

"You're back early, Faremis," his colleague observed, narrow dark eyes darting away from and back to his notes in the space of a blink. He looked like a criminal, thin and greasy and furtive, a complete contrast to the boy from whom he sat opposite. Hojo always sat hunched, a posture that might have been coded into his genes, and his fingers were always tip-tapping, moving on invisible keys, echoing the thought processes that moved lightning-quick through his mental calculator.

"I've often been told that I'm a workaholic," Gast responded, shrugging as he came through the door to stand behind the boy, whose head swivelled around to regard him with blank curiosity. "Though, apparently, not as much as you. You didn't show up at the party at all."

A frown twitched across Hojo's thin lips, and he reached up to adjust his spectacles with a nervous flick of his wrist. "A mere date, just one out of the other three hundred and sixty-four days of the year," he scoffed. "It certainly means nothing to a perfect soldier." Here he nodded, with his usual odd mix of irritation and pride, at the calm, silent boy, who might have smiled if he understood what a smile was, or what it was intended to do.

"I wish you wouldn't keep saying that," Gast said. He forced a smile for Sephiroth's benefit, weathering the chafing effect Hojo's attitude frequently had on his nerves with the ease of long habit. "He's just a child. You can't rush things." He glanced at the boy, and despite the lingering uneasiness felt a rush of sudden affection; Hojo claimed that he was too emotionally invested in his work, a statement that Gast couldn't in good conscience dispute. "Childhood is the greatest experiment of the human life…it's the time where we can do freely what we want, without repercussions. You keep him too secluded."

"And you're too sentimental," Hojo said, and if anyone could make that sound like an insult, it was Hojo. Gast brushed it off again, though there were other times when words rose to his lips he could not hold back. Gast envied and despised both Hojo's professional detachment in the laboratory, and more than once their assistants had been treated to shouting matches as their clashing personalities vied for dominance. Still, they wouldn't have come so far if they didn't work well together for the most part, and Gast could respect his colleague's diamond-edged brilliance if nothing else. "So what were you doing before I arrived?" Gast asked, diverting the conversation to a safer topic. "The mental health evaluation again?"

"It's useless," Hojo said, for once in mutual frustration, indicating the sheaf of papers on his desk. "The brat knows all the textbook answers by now, but since it's not  _my_ bucketloads of money funding this project, I can't do anything about it but waste my valuable time on completely  _useless_ reports I could fill in backwards in my _sleep_." He gave a disgusted sigh and glared daggers at the boy, who promptly lowered his head to examine something interesting on his fingernail. "If I could do everything my way,  _without_ an ignoramus of an employer and a bleeding heart of a colleague, I might actually get something done."

"You aren't wasting office time," Gast pointed out dryly. "You're meant to be  _partying_ right now, Mister Work-Is-My-Life."

Hojo waved a dismissive hand. " _All_ my time is precious," he said with characteristic arrogance. "And by the way, get that thing off your head. The Science Research Division has a reputation of professionalism to maintain, you do realize."

"It's a nice hat," Gast said defensively. "It's festive and the place needs cheering up like you need a personality makeover."

"Yes."

The quiet syllable, uttered barely above the volume of a breath, had both the men's eyebrows snapping up to their hairlines in shared surprise - yet another record of the day. The boy had raised his head and was looking at the offending Santa hat perched on top of Gast's head with an expression of general approval. Then again, perhaps it was because Hojo disapproved of it. Sephiroth took a teenager-like satisfaction in foiling his least favorite 'parent' of the week in any petty way possible. Gast, who still remembered far more of those days than he wanted to, was tolerant of it. Hojo, who according to popular rumor had sprung fully assembled and fully equipped with abrasive personality from some top secret robotics factory somewhere, was not. 

"Wonderful," Hojo said to Gast with annoyance. "You've rubbed off on him. This had better not be permanent."

Gast shrugged. "They say that children inherit their traits from their parents, which in a sense, we are. Ours are the faces that Sephiroth sees around the laboratory the most often, after all."

"What need does a perfect soldier have for a sense of _humor_?" Hojo said, acerbic. "What will he do with it, laugh his enemies to death?"

Gast sighed. "A perfect soldier doesn't spend every second of his life on the battlefield. A perfect soldier might actually be a living, breathing human being outside of his work environment, just like everyone else." He narrowed his eyes pointedly at Hojo. "I suppose you'll just have to take my word for it."

Hojo muttered something unintelligible under his breath, and Gast caught the words, "irritant" and "what would he know." He sighed, turning back to the child, whose momentary animation had faded, leaving that pale, watchful statue once more. It was Christmas and children all over the continent were looking forward to opening their presents, and here this child was, alone in a dark office that reeked of chemicals and distilled Mako with two men who despised each other; yet the gifts of strength and speed and intelligence he had been granted from the unlikeliest of fairy godmothers even before birth ensured that he would never want for anything for the rest of his life. Yet Gast recognized with shock the emotion working its deadly blade into his heart - _pity,_ for the boy who would be the first in the coming generation of superhumans, the boy who was destined for fame and greatness as Midgar's hero. In a moment of sudden clarity Gast thought: _This is what I helped create_.

Slowly, he reached up and deposited the Santa hat on Sephiroth's head, where it slipped over his eyes with a certain charming incongruity as the boy tilted his head upwards in surprise. Hojo, still engaged in his one-sided mumbled rant, failed to notice right away. Sephiroth glanced at him dismissively and looked back at Gast with his characteristic lack of expression that nevertheless managed to communicate, with the most miniscule of changes to the angle of his brows, his query.

"Do you like it?" Gast asked, his smile becoming more genuine in an attempt to set a good example.

Sephiroth got the hint, or at least he sensed an opportunity to annoy Hojo to no end, because his lips curved upwards in one of his rare smiles. It was about as friendly as the smiles of those nice men who go down dark alleyways to rescue meandering drunks from the tempting contents of their wallets, but it was nevertheless, a smile, from which Gast took heart.

"Merry Christmas, Professor," the boy said softly, taking the hat down and turning it over and over in his hands with a thoughtful expression. The tiny brass bell sewn on the end chimed brightly with every movement - far too many times for the action not to be deliberate. "I had not noticed the date."

Though there was no outward change on the boy's face, Gast felt suddenly guilty. "We typically worked through the holiday in Nibelheim, since the people there had their own peculiar lore and customs," he said, ignoring Hojo's increasingly irate and meaningful glances at the half-filled evaluation forms on his desk - remembering with fondness how one of the lab techs had managed to thwart Hojo's miserly will one year by somehow persuading the local grocer to specially import an entire crate of eggnog. "But now we're back in Midgar...it's long past time for you to become more acquainted with the traditions of your homeland. It's the biggest event of the year; a celebration of peace and goodwill among men - "

"And of our munificent President's endless reserves of wealth - " Hojo interjected, with a roll of his eyes. 

"And President Shinra spares no expense in ensuring that every citizen of Midgar enjoys himself to the fullest," Gast said more diplomatically. "There're dances, parades, fireworks...you name it, Midgar's thumbed her nose at the rest of the world by being best at it." He smiled, fondly.

Sephiroth looked perplexed. "How exactly does that promote peace and goodwill?"

"By being too drunk and hungover in the morning to make war," Gast laughed, relaxing into the conversation - Sephiroth was interested, and for once actually appeared his age. "When you're in the military, you'll come to realize just how vital a strategy it is in maintaining our peace treaty with Wutai especially - they're almost as fond of partying as we are."

"Your attempts at corrupting the subject are ever so subtle," Hojo muttered, the spoilsport, reaching past and snatching the hat from Sephiroth's unresisting grip. He tossed it carelessly onto the table. "We've wasted enough time chatting; now either go home or get back to work. There are no vacations in my personal timetable - you and Sephiroth can attend completely pointless company parties and admire the pretty lights all you like when the project is an unqualified success, and not a moment sooner."

"Oh, come on," Gast said, annoyed. "You have too much confidence in your own work to truly believe a little exposure to the common rabble will turn Sephiroth into dust."

 "It's not exposure I'm afraid of," Hojo said, his voice cold, "but osmosis. He is still a child, his mind still unformed and vulnerable to infection. A soldier's body is worthless without a soldier's mind." He sneered. "Which you are constantly going to every length to deprive him of."

Taken aback at the venom in Hojo's tone, Gast blinked. "I had no such intention. I don't see how - "

Hojo turned away, slanting his chair so that his shoulder came between Gast and Sephiroth to form a forbidding barrier. "Exactly. You _don't_ see. The President agrees with me, by the way," he said, offhandedly. "Effective on the new year, we will no longer be partners. I am to be placed in charge of the project; you will answer to  _me_."

" _What_?" Gast could only stare in disbelief. On the sidelines, Sephiroth glanced back and forth between the two of them with no apparent support for one or the other; he knew he should moderate the exchange for the child's sake or move it elsewhere completely but couldn't seem to summon the strength needed to do so, not in the face of Hojo's obvious gloating. Did Sephiroth even understand the implications this held for his future, did he even _realize_ what all their arguments had been about? "When did you even - "

"Yesterday." Hojo smiled; Gast's hands twitched with the desire to throttle his skinny neck. "You've been complaining so much about the  _burden_ you've been laboring under lately, I thought it'd be nice to arrange an appropriate gift for you. The President was kind enough to get the paperwork expedited to make it in time for today. Right or wrong, foul or fair - I call all the shots. You'll be free from the consequences of my decisions - just what you wanted, isn't it?"

"You can't take this away from me," Gast hissed in growing anger.  "I was there from the very beginning of the Jenova project, I oversaw the breakthrough - you _didn't even consult me -_ "

"Oh, Professor Faremis." Hojo's dark eyes gleamed with mirth. "Don't you know the very best presents are surprises?"

Gast just barely stifled a scream of pure frustration. "I'll speak with the President," he promised through gritted teeth, though he already knew it would be of no use, if they had both colluded behind his back on this. It was more a way for him to exit with dignity without undermining his authority further with the child, though he feared that it already was. 

"Professor," the boy said, as he made to leave, "your hat - " 

He held it out. The bell at the end dangled, limply.

"Thank you," Gast said. Their fingers brushed; Sephiroth's considering stare betrayed nothing of the emotions he harbored. Perhaps there truly was nothing, and Sephiroth cared little beyond playing the role he had been born and raised for. Perhaps he even resented _Gast_ for holding him back all this while. Gast stretched the moment of contact as long as he dared, searching for the interest that had kindled in Sephiroth during their discussion, any hint of the little boy he could have been - in another time and place, as no one more or less important than Lucrecia's son...

Sephiroth stepped back at Hojo's impatient summons. Gast let the door slide shut between them, leaving him alone in the corridor.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written and posted on 25/12/07. Heavily revised to fit in with the rest of the 'verse.


End file.
